Editor's note: This article is the third in a four-part series about the U's reaction to the Crandall Canyon Mine cave-in in Huntington, Utah. Part four will run Thursday.
Walter Arabasz didn't think much of it when his pager went off during the morning hours of Aug. 6. After all, it had been the third time that night that his pager -- which he faithfully carries on his hip at all times, even while he sleeps -- had gone off.
Arabasz, director of the U Seismograph Stations, had received two previous calls that night automatically delivered by one of the monitoring devices in the center that pages the staff every time an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.5 or greater in the Wasatch Front or greater than 3.0 in surrounding areas occurs.
The first call indicated an earthquake in southeast Nevada; the other took place at Yellowstone National Park. Because both took place outside of Utah, Arabasz knew out-of-state stations were handling the event, so he tried going back to bed. Then his pager began to vibrate for a third time.
Seismic activity registering with a 4.0 magnitude, which was later revised to 3.9, had been detected in a rural area in southeast Utah at 2:48 a.m.
Arabasz later found out that the seismic activity involved the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine, which was the start of a saga that has since left three rescue workers dead, six miners trapped and thousands of community members without answers in a rescue effort that has lasted more than four weeks.
Arabasz played a key part in the event as the first person to call authorities about the collapse -- even before 911 calls were made or officials in Emery County were notified.
Arabasz got out of bed and -- like the routine he had followed for the last 33 years as a U seismologist -- checked both the U's earthquake-monitoring website and the U.S. Geological Survey site to make sure the reported activity was not a false alarm.
Within four minutes, the automatic location of the seismic activity was registered and Arabasz knew it was real. He got dressed, left his wife a note and drove two-and-a-half miles to the U Seismograph Stations, housed in the William Browning Building.
"By this point, there was some sleep deprivation happening," Arabasz said.
Although Arabasz was the first to reach the building, he was not alone. Two of his colleagues, Jim Pechmann and Relu Burlacu, had received pages, checked the websites and were on their way.
"You just look at the data and you know," said Pechmann, research associate professor.
As the campus remained quiet in the early morning hours, the three men scrambled in a room, swapping duties collecting and assessing the information.
"We were as organized as we could be at three in the morning," Arabasz said.
After a short time, data indicated that a coal mining-related collapse had occurred.
At 3:47 a.m., Arabasz called the Emery County sheriff and officials in Carbon County who said they were not aware of the collapse. Arabasz gave the information they had gathered and pointed them toward the website.
A short while later, the Carbon County sheriff called back and told Arabasz about the flood of 911 calls that had been made minutes after he called.
Arabasz complied a press release to send to the media, a common practice if activity with more than a 3.5 magnitude is recorded.
During the next two days, the three men and the rest of the staff revised and reviewed the information with help from the Burkley Seismological Laboratory.
Their final assessments indicated the activity had been caused from the mine collapse and not an earthquake, which proved mine co-owner Robert Murray's previous statements wrong.
Arabasz refused to comment about Murray's statements.
"Not all seismic activity is what it looks like," said Pechmann, who has been a seismologist for more than 20 years. "The reported activity was undoubtedly related to the mine collapse."
When the men came back to work at 5 a.m., they remembered that the phones were "off the hook," said Burlacu, seismic network manager.
"It was a really, really busy morning -- especially because we usually have more work to do on Mondays," Burlacu said. "It was a tough way to start the week."
A week that started with vibrating pagers. U seismologists had only begun using pagers in 2002, in case an earthquake happened during the Winter Olympics, Pechmann said.
Weeks after the chaotic night, as the rescue efforts continue to receive local and national media attention, the men still consider the event a normal occurrence.
"We're really surprised that this is getting so much attention," Pechmann said. "It's really just a part of our job."
a.breton@chronicle.utah.edu
